there are 2 limiting factors to solar.  Efficiency of conversion to 
electricity and ease/expense of manufacturing the panels.  If they 
could hit a 30% or more efficiency rate the government should just 
pay to put them on the roofs of all the homes and buildings, it would 
be cheaper than trying to make hydrogen fueling stations.  I've been 
encouraged by the results from this company http://www.nanosolar.com/

Then you've got battery storage, a really secret company called 
eestor has supposedly created a revolutionary storage device and is 
scheduled to be out in a Zenn car in less than a year.  Assuming this 
is true, it would be amazing.

Now with an effecient solar panel and something like the eestor 
storage device, you could have panels on everything and trickle 
charge the storage devices.  I know when I go camping I see campers 
with about 6 square feet of solar panels out to trickle charge their 
batteries, I've been wanting to do this for a while as I dry camp and 
we are always running out of battery power.

So there is a lot that can be done, also making hybrids run off 
battery till it has to switch to gas instead of at a certain speed.

At 11:26 AM 7/8/2008, Mark Wonsil wrote:
> > Go to YouTube and type in "171mpg." Doing this will bring up a
> > hobbyist/engineer's log outlining the mileage he gets in his PHEV-
> > converted Prius. "Dave" has a fair number of these logs recording his
> > experiences on YouTube, but he's not unique, and Toyota has been paying
> > close attention to
> > these people. The 2009 Toyota is rumored to be based on their designs: a
> > PHEV, perhaps advertising 100+ mpg when it appears.
>
>I find that MPG is the wrong measurement though. A completely electric car
>has an infinite MPG. A better measure would be cost/distance. Because
>electricity is cheaper to produce than gas, the Plug-In is about a quarter
>to a third the cost of gas/petrol over the same distance.
>
> > Even more than that, Toyota just announced today that it will also be
> > offering the next logical step: a solar-powered PHEV version of the Prius:
>...
> > In a normal commute situation, where the car sits in a parking lot all
> > a trickle charge integrated over a day's charging likely means the commute
> > home could be free (no gasoline, no external electricity), depending on
> > size of the solar array placed on the car's upper surfaces.
>
>In the articles I have found relating to this story, the solar panels are
>not advertised for mileage but are meant to add to other features like air
>conditioning, small fans, etc. That's not to say that it couldn't provide a
>small boost to the range of a trip but that wasn't the impression I got from
>the articles. Here's one example:
>
>http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/07/BUFO11L7FO.DTL
>...
>Toyota Motor Corp. plans to stick solar panels on some models of its popular
>Prius hybrid car, according to news reports Monday. The panels, made by
>Kyocera, would help power the air conditioner.
>
>Details are sketchy. The Nikkei financial newspaper of Japan and the Reuters
>international news service reported the story, but both relied on
>unidentified sources. Toyota refused to confirm or deny the reports, saying
>the company doesn't talk about future product plans.
>
>And some of the details seem implausible. Nikkei wrote that the panels would
>produce 2 to 5 kilowatts of electricity, roughly the same as a rooftop solar
>array on a typical house.
>
>But some alternative energy experts find the idea intriguing. Today's solar
>panels can't provide nearly enough power to run a passenger car by
>themselves, and they could significantly inflate a car's cost. But they
>could also make a car more efficient.
>
>"It's not going to eliminate gasoline consumption in a Prius, and it
>wouldn't be on my list of energy improvements I'd make to a car," said Mark
>Duvall, program manager for electric transportation studies at the Electric
>Power Research Institute. "But that doesn't mean it can't make a small but
>significant improvement in the amount of gasoline you'd use."
>...
>
>
>Mark W.
>
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Regards,

Shawn Gordon
President
theKompany.com
www.thekompany.com
www.mindawn.com
949-713-3276

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